


sing me to sleep

by pocky_slash



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: Background Het, Canon Disabled Character, During Canon, Established Relationship, Growing Old Together, Happy Ending, M/M, Old mutants in love, Pre-Canon, Sleeping Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2018-01-27 18:48:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1719287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocky_slash/pseuds/pocky_slash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four evenings Charles and Erik managed to get some rest in the midst of dark times, and one morning they have all the time in the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sing me to sleep

**Author's Note:**

> Happy My Birthday to you, internet!
> 
> Thanks, as ever, to **pearl_o** for letting me write most of this at her in email and for looking it over for me when it was done. Old Charles and Erik's relationship predictably made me _so_ happy in DoFP, so I doubt this will be the last time I tell a part of their story ♥
> 
> Title from "Asleep" by the Smiths.

They take the Wolverine back to their house at Charles' insistence.

 _I don't want him there,_ Erik says, arms crossed as Charles drives them from the airport and across town.

 _Well, until we get a better base of operations, get used to it, dear,_ Charles says. _We can't very well have this meeting at a Starbucks, now can we?_

Erik sighs and hmphs out loud, which only serves to catch the Wolverine's attention from the back seat.

"Prof," he says, leaning up between them and peering at Charles wryly, "should my ears be burning?"

"An old fight, Logan," Charles says. "Nothing to worry about. I'll make sure he doesn't kill you in your sleep."

Erik rolls his eyes at the Wolverine's bark of laughter and stares mulishly out the window until they reach the house--secluded, unremarkable, ordinary. In another life, he imagined settling into a house like this with Charles for other reasons entirely. Today, he follows Charles and the Wolverine inside, where the floral papered walls are covered with video screens, blueprints, and maps and the tasteful, plush furniture has been shoved haphazardly into a corner to make way for tables piled with books and computers. The Wolverine takes it all in and whistles.

"This is serious," he says. 

"It is," Charles says, staring up at him unwavering. Erik has nothing to add--there's nothing to add. It's the most serious thing any of them have ever dealt with before. He stands behind Charles and places his hands on Charles' shoulders. A united front. There were times he thought they'd never be on the same side again. He almost wishes he was right.

"Okay," the Wolverine says, looking them up and down slowly. "Start from the beginning."

It's a long story, especially starting from the beginning. The telling alone takes them late into the night, when Charles starts to repeat himself in his drowsiness and even the Wolverine is nodding off.

"We'll continue tomorrow, I think," Erik says. It makes Charles smile--in their youth, it was Charles who made sure they ate and drank and slept on time, while Erik was happy to work late into the night, until he dropped. These days, Erik takes Charles' second chance at life for the gift that it is and does his level best to make sure Charles stays healthy and alive for a long time. 

"There's only one bedroom, I'm afraid," Charles says. "The sofa pulls out, if you move some of the tables around."

"Or you're welcome to gather some sticks and grasses and nest out back, of course," Erik says. The Wolverine snorts and Charles sighs.

"The couch is fine," the Wolverine says. "I've slept worse. Do you--" He pauses and frowns, then looks at the two of them again, eyes narrowed. "Wait, if there's only one bedroom--"

"Perceptive, aren't you?" Erik says. "Charles--bed."

"No need to nag," Charles says. To the Wolverine, "There are blankets and pillows and towels in the hall closet. Please help yourself. And help yourself to anything in the kitchen. We'll pick this up in the morning."

Erik is still grumbling and unsettled as they prepare for bed, even as Charles transfers himself smoothly from his chair to the bed and pulls down the blankets, motioning for Erik to give up pacing and join him.

"You know," Charles says, "he's a lot less intimidating if you think of him as a skunk bear instead of a wolverine." 

Erik snorts and climbs under the covers, moving close to Charles and turning off the lights with a wave of his hand. He can still feel the Wolverine shifting around in the living room, his metal skeleton in constant motion. He tries to block it out and focus instead on the iron in Charles' blood, rushing through his veins, still alive, still here in Erik's arms.

There are times he would trade Charles' renewed life and their partnership for a future free of the threat they're facing. He knows it was the choice he would make in the past, unflinchingly. He wouldn't hesitate to make the sacrifice at thirty, at forty, at fifty.

Now, though, in quiet moments like these, he wonders if it isn't worth it. This is the man most dear to him in the world, smoothing his hair back, alive and warm beside him, ready to face what comes next by his side. Maybe he wouldn't trade this after all.

"Heavy thoughts," Charles murmurs. 

"I wish we didn't have to bring him here," Erik says.

"Needs must," Charles says. "And we do need him. But he's out there and this in here? This is still yours. Ours."

Erik has given literally everything to the cause, including fifty years of his life, including Charles, once before. He doesn't know that he's ever had something that was properly his and his alone, not a resource ready to be shared with all of mutantkind. 

He's adjusting to the idea more quickly than he imagined he could, selfish in his old age and quick to wrap his arms around Charles, curled up in the blankets of their bed and tasting the word "mine" on his tongue as Charles tucks his head into the curve of Erik's neck and drifts off to sleep.

***

They have one night in the ruins of the school, which Charles thinks is for the best. He's seen it before, the crumbling walls and blacked rubble that was once his home, once his life's work, but it doesn't hurt any less moving through the abandoned halls tonight. His terrible childhood memories have long since been superseded by memories of his students, and those are the ghosts that haunt him as he takes in the shadows and the destruction.

The school grounds have long since been abandoned. After the attack here two years ago, no one has felt safe and there was no way they could rebuild. The sentinels didn't get into the rooms below the school itself, though, a small mercy, and that's why they're here today. There's intelligence to gather, information to recover, and databases to be destroyed once and for all.

He won't pretend it doesn't hurt. He won't pretend the failure doesn't weigh on him heavily. He won't pretend he doesn't appreciate the way that Erik is handling him tonight--gentler, warmer than usual. He'd insisted on coming, though they try not to go on missions together these days, just in case things go poorly and they don't make it back. Charles has faith that Logan and Ororo and the others could go on in their absence, but they are less sure of that themselves.

Erik's hesitation has less to do with lack of faith and more to do with practicality.

"I'm not the man I used to be," he admitted to Charles and Charles alone. "Should they get us both and keep us alive, I can't promise I wouldn't fold to save you from torture or worse." 

Tonight, though, Erik insisted on joining him, on standing with him as he helped Forge clear off every hidden scrap of information they could find and systematically wiped the machines as they finished. Tomorrow, they will burn what remains of the X-Men training rooms. Tonight, they're curled up in bedrooms that haven't been touched in two years, remains of the night the sentinels came for his children.

Forge is on first watch--he's going through the information they've gathered thus far and will alert them if anyone or anything comes for them. They should be using this time to catch up on much-needed sleep, but instead Charles is staring at the ceiling. 

They're in his old room. He chose it on purpose, though Forge didn't know that of course, and as it is in the corner of the second floor and unaffected by the damage to the building, it's a logical choice regardless of his reasoning. Erik knew immediately, of course. It was the first bed they shared in this house, though one Charles hasn't claimed as his own for years. It was converted to a guest room for visiting parents, teachers, and other guests during the second iteration of the school, the one that relaunched after the war in Vietnam. It's plain and empty--no belongings, no detritus from whomever lived there before the attack, left frozen in time the way some of the other rooms are.

"Sleep," Erik murmurs against his ear, tightening his grip on Charles' midsection. 

"I'm trying," Charles lies.

"No, you're not," Erik says. "You're thinking. I knew we never should have stayed here."

"We can't burn the sub-basements at night, it will be too obvious," Charles says.

"Then we should have come back later to do it," Erik says. "I don't like you being here."

Charles sighs, more of a long whisper of breath born of sadness than frustration.

"I don't like being here either," Charles says. One last night in the home that meant so much to him. He knows, though Erik appreciates what the school meant as a symbol, this is foreign to Erik. Erik never had anything he couldn't give away or leave behind, save for Charles himself. Erik never had a home, and though the thought broke Charles' heart over and over again through the sixty years of their complicated relationship, it means he can't begin to understand what Charles is feeling.

That doesn't mean he's not sensitive to Charles' pain, however. Charles rather likes the softness that has come to Erik with age. He wishes it didn't take the annihilation of their species to bring it to light.

"This was the closest thing I ever had to a home," Erik says, perceptive in the dark and silence, or maybe Charles is bleeding over. "A place I knew I could come if I needed help, a place I knew I wouldn't be turned away. The first place I slept soundly."

"It was that place for many people," Charles says. "Many children. I let them take my children, Erik."

"You didn't let them do anything," Erik says. He holds Charles fiercely, presses their foreheads together. "What happened was a tragedy, but it wasn't your fault. We'll fix it. Somehow, we'll fix it. I'll get you your children back. I'll bring you new children."

"Promises, promises," Charles says around the lump in his throat. "It's a little late for a proposal, my dear."

It comes out less humorous than he wants, shaky under the weight of their past and their uncertain future alike.

"It's never too late," Erik says.

"You sound like me," Charles says.

"Well," Erik says. "We have been together for nearly sixty years now. They do say that couples begin to sound like each other in their old age." 

Charles laughs as Erik intended, and blinks the tears from his eyes. 

"Besides, someone has to sound like you when you can't," Erik says. "I'll hold on to your hope until you're ready to hold it yourself, then I'll go back to being a pessimistic ass."

Charles laughs again and kisses Erik, alone in the dark in the room where they shared their first night in the mansion all those years ago.

"I love you, you old fool," he says, because they're in the midst of a war that even Charles doubts they'll be able to truly win. Because he spent too many years afraid to say it at all.

"And I you," Erik assures him. "Get some sleep. The sooner we sleep, the sooner tomorrow dawns, and the sooner we're back with your precious children. They'll want their professor well-rested."

He does sleep, then, his head on Erik's shoulder and his eyelids heavy, despite the lingering memories of his shattered dreams. He'll have new dreams. He must. To save the world, he needs to believe the world is worth saving.

But then, as Erik hums him a quiet lullaby and strokes his back in the dark of their bedroom, he thinks maybe he already does.

***

Erik lets the clock tick down to the second. It's an exercise in his own self-control, which is as tenuous now as it ever was. Many things about Erik have calmed and stilled and slowed with age and war, but his patience isn't one of them. The last thirty seconds are still torture, but he fists his hands and closes his eyes and when the last second passes, he releases a breath he didn't know he was holding. 

He opens his eyes and rises to his feet.

"Time," he says to Charles.

"Just another minute," Charles murmurs, distracted by the pop-up Cerebro interface. There are many fewer mutants now than there were when Cerebro was first constructed and many, many fewer than there were at the height of the mutant population in the early aughts, but they're scattered throughout the globe and most of them are constantly on the move. The new technology this Cerebro operates off of can't have the wide scope of earlier models, not if they want to avoid the sentinels. Instead, it has a powerful but limited circumference of reach. It makes finding one mutant in particular even more difficult than it was before and means they go on many more impromptu rescue missions when they find people in peril while searching the globe for the group they're looking for. 

Tonight, though, it's been quiet. It should be frustrating--time grows short and the more time that passes between Kitty's first halting message to them and successfully discovering their current hide away, the worse the chances of finding her and her companions alive. However, tonight Erik is tired and his old bones are aching and he can't help but see the dead air on the other end of Cerebro as a blessing.

"No more minutes," Erik says. He squeezes Charles' shoulder. "That's the deal. No more than three hours at a time, and your three hours are up, old friend."

Charles sighs, and opens his mouth to argue, but Logan steps forward and puts his hand over the Cerebro interface.

"He's right," Logan says, and Charles stares up at him for a moment, mouth very nearly pulled up into a pout, before his shoulders slump and he backs away from the computer station.

"Very well," Charles says.

"Why is it that you listen to him and not me?" Erik asks, nudging Charles' chair towards the back part of the plane where the rudimentary sleeping quarters are located.

"Because he's much more objective when it comes to my health," Charles says. He takes Erik's hint, though, and moves down the plane towards the beds. Erik can read the weariness in the set of his shoulders and the way his head is listing to the side. He's tired. They're all tired. Erik has come to believe that they'll most likely continue to be tired until they're dead, which will likely happen any day now as the mutant and human numbers both dwindle down to extinction.

He tries to have hope for Charles, to let Charles' hope infuse him the way it did when they were young men on the brink of discovering the rest of their kind. It's difficult, though. Even on a day like today, when nothing in particular is after them and they've had three square meals, Erik can't feel their fate creeping in around them.

He tries to banish it from his mind. It's not the sort of thing he wants to bring into his bed and it's certainly not the sort of thing he wants to bring into Charles' bed. Instead, he focuses on slipping out of the bulkier parts of his armor and taking off his boots while Charles does the same. He stands to allow Charles to slip inside the sleeping alcove. He slides all the way down until he's against the wall and then arranges his limbs and gestures for Erik to join him. It's a tight fit--these cubbies weren't made for two occupants--but Erik has no problem using his power to reshape the opening until they're both curled comfortably together.

After the attack on their base, the loss of Forge and Pyro and Psylocke, the scattering of the students that remained, Erik had hesitated to share space with Charles like this. It was different in the cavernous underground ruins, where they had a room to themselves. The plane was all communal space--even the three sleeping alcoves were used in shifts, occupied by whomever was sleeping at the time and then passed on to the next person who needed a rest. 

Time is short, though, and it's not as if everyone doesn't already know. 

"We need to find her, Erik," Charles says.

"And we will," Erik says, with more confidence than he feels.

"She could have the key to ending all of this once and for all," Charles says.

"We--" Erik tries to say, but in the dark on their sleeping space, in the warmth between their bodies, the lie dies on his lips. "Do you really think anything can end this any longer?"

"Of course I do," Charles says, and for a moment, it's like the kindly professor is in bed with him--optimistic and steady and ready to support anyone who needs it. The facade slips after only a moment, though, and Charles' expression becomes more hunted and tired. "I have to," he amends. "What would I have left if I didn't have hope? What would I have to become?"

Erik doesn't want to think about what Charles would be devoid of the hope that keeps him going, without the ability to rally their troops. Erik doesn't want to think about Charles broken, not ever again. He's spent too much of his life doing the breaking.

"We'll find her," he says again, and makes it a promise. His days of breaking Charles are over. "Get some sleep. You'll need your strength to look again tomorrow."

Charles doesn't reply with words, but Erik feels his gratitude as he closes his own eyes and lays his head down next to Charles'. He still doesn't know that he can give into hope himself, but he can put his trust in Charles, and maybe that will be enough.

***

Charles watches silently as Bobby administers another shot to Kitty's arm. She winces at the first prick of the needle, but relaxes a split second later. The placebo effect kicks in even before the stimulants, and she widens her eyes and looks more aware than she has in hours, even though it will still take a few minutes for the drugs to rush through her system.

"This isn't good for you," Bobby says, squeezing her shoulder. "You need to sleep."

"I can't sleep until Logan is back," Kitty says, staring determinedly ahead. Bobby sighs and she glances up at him, forcing a half-smile. "Hey, what's a little sleep in the face of saving the future? If this works, I can sleep for a week."

Bobby isn't placated, of course, but he releases her shoulder and goes back to pacing restlessly around the room, suppressing a yawn.

"Don't stay up on her behalf," Erik says to him, gesturing to where Kitty is still sitting at the stone dais. "Rest, you fool. Your turn for watch will come soon enough and we'll need you alert then."

"But--" Bobby starts to say, but Kitty says, " _Bobby_ " and he sighs and shakes his head, stalking over to the corner were a bedroll has been laid out for whomever isn't on watch. Charles holds back a laugh. He's intimately familiar with that tone of voice and that stern look. In fact, he's about to employ them himself.

"The same goes for us, you know," he says to Erik, looking up at him over his shoulder, where Erik has been lurking like a solemn sentry, as if he can scare the sentinels away from Charles and Kitty with his glare alone.

"I'm fine," Erik says.

"You're exhausted, I can tell," Charles says. "We _both_ need some rest, just in case this takes longer than we anticipated."

Erik snorts.

"I do fear that trying to get the two of us to accomplish anything together in 1973 may take the whole of the next fifty years," he admits. "I equal parts loved and loathed you while I was in that cell. Some days I missed you so badly I could hardly get out of bed because nothing seemed worth anything without you. Some days I paced for hours, furious that you hadn't even tried to talk to me, to see if any of it was true."

"I felt the same," Charles says. He allows himself to linger on the memory for only a moment, on the weight of the huge, empty house weighing down on him, on the haze of drugs and drink, on the rage and anger and helplessness he felt, the bitterness that he couldn't teach his heart to unlove Erik. 

He pulls himself from the memories before they can consume him. Perhaps they're on their way to shaping a better future.

"Come," he says softly, reaching up to take Erik's hand. "Lie down with me."

"Charles," Erik starts to say, but the rest of the sentence drifts away once he's holding Charles' gloved hand in his own.

"Go on," Kitty says. "I'm fine. Blink'll be in soon to keep me company and I'm really good at psychic wake-ups after all those months with Psylocke before--well. I'm really good at psychic wake-ups." She smiles at them and Charles can see Erik wavering. He did take quite a liking to Kitty in the few years they spent together before the sentinel attack on their base broke them all into small factions on the run. Charles squeezes his hand.

"Darling," he says quietly, a rare endearment, a remnant from the days they all had time for hope and sentiment. Now, sometimes, it feels like Charles is protecting the last shred of hope any of them have left.

It's enough, though. Erik comes willingly, away from Kitty and into another dark corner, defensible should the sentinels come while they sleep. He sits down on the rough bedrolls and Charles can see the weight of his years and the pain in his knees displayed on his face. He still reaches out, though, and helps lower Charles from his chair until they're both on the floor, warming the stone and each other. An indulgence, one he doubts Erik will allow for much longer. It makes more sense, tactically, for Charles to be in his chair should anything happen. Of course, it's possible that Erik knows as well as Charles does that if the sentinels were to come now, they all stand little chance of escape.

"It hadn't even occurred to me that you were in pain too," Erik murmurs. "I was so angry. I blamed everything that went wrong on you."

"And I you," Charles says. "We were young. We were hurting and foolish and lonely. Of course we lashed out at each other."

"Wasted time," Erik says, shaking his head. "Years of it. They're right when they say youth is wasted on the young."

"Perhaps we'll get it right this time," Charles says, and he stokes that ember of hope thinking, just for a moment, of a future where they change Raven's fate and their own as well, of a future where they come back together and stay that way.

"That's what we're counting on, is it not?" Erik asks, eyebrows raised. Charles hums in response and presses his dry lips to Erik's cheek.

"Sleep," Charles says. "You'll be out on watch soon enough."

"You too," Erik says, but he relaxes. Not entirely, of course, but enough, at least, to let Charles hold him. "Sleep well, my love."

Well, perhaps sentiment isn't entirely dead after all. Charles smiles and lets the hope in his heart burn just a little bit brighter.

***

Erik fights the first morning light and his body's internal clock for as long as he can manage, but eventually he has to give in and open his eyes, despite the fact that it's Saturday morning and his wedding anniversary and far too early for him to even think about getting out of bed. The digital clock on the bedside table confirms what the filigreed brass hands on the antique wall clock had already established before he opened his eyes--it's not even seven am. 

He rolls onto his back with a groan and stares at the ceiling. The children will still be asleep this early. There are hundreds of children here at the school, the walls full of them and another dorm besides, children who disagree on everything under the sun except the need to sleep until at least noon on the weekends. Erik could get out of bed now and waste his morning off being up and about--make coffee and breakfast, maybe even bring it up to Charles. That would be a nice surprise, wouldn't it? Certainly not a waste of his time. Charles still loves being doted on, loves being loved. He claims that it's because he gets a double shot of endorphins--the happiness he's feeling himself mingling with the happiness he picks up from others--but Erik thinks it's more likely that Charles is just an egomaniac who enjoys attention for the sake of it. 

"Mm, and you married me anyway," Charles murmurs without opening his eyes. Erik shakes his head, but he can't hide his smile. It would be silly to even try--it's not as if Charles is seeing it with his eyes as much as getting the ghost of an impression of the quirk of Erik's lips through the emotions pouring off of him.

"I was going to make you breakfast," Erik says, resettling himself so he can look down at Charles' face. It's lined, now, with age and years of fortitude, frustration, and struggle, but just as dear to him as it was the night Charles pulled him out of the Atlantic all those years ago. To think after all their struggles--all the struggles of their kind, from that first confrontation in Cuba to the Kennedy assassination to the business with Trask to the registration act, Apocalypse, Asteroid M, the Legacy virus--years and years of mutant history. To think after all of it and their arguments, their debates, the battles they fought physically and emotionally, that they would have this--a home together, a school, a life together, one they've been building for thirty years. There were days he couldn't stand the sight of Charles, whole years he spent cursing his name. There were battles where he would never have imagined himself sitting behind a desk, teaching. There were months on the run where he didn't sleep in a bed for days at a time, let alone have one to come back to every night, clean and crisp and waiting for him.

And, all that aside, even when he let himself be calm and content and happy in Charles' arms, he never imagined the world would allow them to marry.

Here they are, all those years later, over sixty since they met, over thirty since Erik came home for good, and today, this morning, ten years since he put a ring on Charles' finger and made official his personal mission to love and honor and cherish Charles for the rest of their days.

"I appreciate the thought," Charles says, but he doesn't open his eyes, and his hand slips out from under the covers and curls around Erik's hip. "But it can wait, don't you think?"

"And what did you have in mind instead?" Erik asks. If he sounds indulgent, it's only because he is. He's allowed to indulge his husband on the morning of their anniversary.

"Nothing strenuous," Charles says. "Just stay in bed with me for a little longer."

He opens his eyes, then. It's Erik's weakness. When he was younger, even in the days he hated Charles or thought Charles hated him, he could barely resist those eyes. In his old age, he doesn't even try. He leans over and kisses Charles' forehead, then slips back down under the covers, close enough that they're pressed together along one side from shoulders to ankles. 

"Needy," Erik whispers into the space between his shoulder and neck, as if there's anywhere more important to be.

"Always," Charles says. "Especially on a morning like this. You do remember, I'm sure, that there were certain students who didn't believe we'd make it one year into marriage, let alone ten."

Erik snorts and presses his lips to the damp curve of Charles' neck.

"Rather foolish of them, considering we'd already been here, together, for over two decades at that point," he says.

"Yes, well," Charles says, and Erik can hear his smile. "Not to mention all the time before that and the complicated mess we kept making of things. Do you remember the seventies?"

"I remember your hair in the seventies."

"I remember your fashion sense in the seventies."

"I was very hip."

"Mmhm," Charles says with a tone that makes it clear he's humoring Erik for the sake of moving the conversation along. "Specifically, I mean--after it was all over--Logan and Trask and Raven and Nixon. After Raven had gone and Logan's mind returned to the future and Trask was arrested and I let you go off." Erik does remember that specifically. He remembers the hot anger that pulsed through his veins, the frustration, and the self-recrimination for the way he couldn't get Charles out of his head, even once he replaced his damn helmet.

"For months I thought, _You're a bloody idiot, Xavier, you let him go. He's out for blood and he'll do something terrible and it will be on your head and worst of all, he'll never come back to you,_ " Charles continues. "I tried to have faith, because I had seen us, in Logan's mind--side by side in battle, united to face the worst the future had to throw at them. I thought, _Things will get that bad and he'll come back_ , but I never imagined this. I never imagined that it wouldn't be things getting worse, it would be things getting better until they were good enough for you to walk in one day like you were ready to stay forever."

"I was," Erik says. He smooths his hand down Charles' chest, looking up at him, almost embarrassed. The t-shirt Charles is wearing is one of Erik's own, one of a thousand little intimacies sprinkled throughout their days. Charles sometimes wears his clothes and saves him the parts of the paper he likes best. Charles ties his ties whenever they go out, even though Erik is better at it than he is, and he always fastens Charles' cufflinks. Sometimes, when they're watching a movie or reading together, they hold hands simply because they can. Erik makes Charles a cup of tea every morning, made just how he likes it, and Charles writes _I love you_ at the close of every note and email and message and memo he leaves for Erik.

A thousand little intimacies, the product of a life lived together. Erik's had this for his own for thirty years now and he still feels a fool for spending the first thirty alone. He's comforted only by the knowledge that in the last timeline, he waited even longer before coming home.

And that's what this is--it's what it always was, even when he was running, even when he was angry. This is home. Not the house, though he's become familiar and comfortable here, though it was the first place he felt safe all those years ago, when he stepped in for the first time. No, Charles is his home. Charles has been since maybe the moment his mind reached out to Erik, since maybe the moment Charles saved him from drowning. He's always known it, though he fought it for years, resented it and hated it. But time passed and things got better, things for mutants got better. Mystique led a quiet revolution on the front page of the newspapers, Charles fueled a succession of influential politicians to pave the way in Washington, and Erik's rage and righteous anger eventually turned into resignation that perhaps there were more effective ways to ensure the survival of the mutant race. 

The morning he returned, it was without the helmet and still Charles didn't seem to understand why he was there. Even when he read it from Erik's mind, countless kisses later over a mused chess game and half-finished drinks, he still didn't quite believe it.

He wonders, sometimes, if Charles believes it now, if he's still afraid that Erik will walk out of the mansion and never return. He hopes, as silly as a piece of paper is to two men who've seen all they have, that their marriage has convinced him otherwise, if nothing else.

"I'm glad," Charles says, closing his eyes and dipping his head until their foreheads rest together. "I don't want you going anywhere else."

"I'm yours to do with what you please," Erik says. Sixty years ago, fifty, forty, the very idea of giving himself to someone else like this would have disgusted him. Now he knows better--he's Charles’ as much as Charles is his and they're more powerful, more effective, more complete together than they could ever be on their own.

"Lovely," Charles says. He twists and tugs until Erik gets the hint and lays himself over Charles' chest so Charles can hold onto him like a stuffed toy. "I think, if it's alright with you, I'll start by having a lie-in with you. It's far too early to be up and about."

"Whatever you say, Charles," Erik says, and closes his eyes, listening to the sound of the blood rushing through Charles' veins and his steady heartbeat.

It's Saturday and it's early and it's his wedding anniversary. There are things to do, of course, and he suspects the children have planned a party, but right now, none of that is as important as lying here in his bed and sleeping in with his husband.


End file.
